wow, some of these apps are awesome and i need to check into downloading them into my iPhone! with rachel coming soon, i need to save this list so i can get my head back in the game and start losing baby weight after she arrives. i will NOT be one of those women who claims 3 years later that she *just* had a kid and that’s why she’s still fat. nope, nope, nope! i vow that that will not be me!

I am having a really difficult time putting into a few words for a blog post what I’ve learned over the past few years about losing weight, gaining muscle, and decreasing body fat. It can be a bit confusing to explain, so I know for the beginner, it is probably confusing to read. I’ll do my best! It’s a bit long, but please bare with me and hear me out til the end :o)

I was reading some posts today from the Facebook Fit Bitch page (kinda in your face but has lots of knowledge and still responds to posts even though she has lots of followers), and she explained that you can’t have fat loss and build muscle at the same time, which is why spot reduction is a big myth. I had always assumed you could do both, that it was a simultaneous thing. I knew spot reduction was bull, but I thought you could lose a few lbs while also gaining muscle. What finally clicked in my head is how Meg explained that there are two ways to get a really toned, beautiful body. You can lose weight/fat (cut), then add muscle (bulk) – and incidentally add back some fat, too, and then you have to lose weight/fat (cut) again OR you can bulk up by adding muscle and some fat and then cut by removing the fat to reveal the muscles, which makes so much more sense! Why? You’re cutting out a whole step (and months of work) AND when you build muscle first, those muscles burn calories at a faster rate, which makes the cut phase so much easier/faster. This is why so many of those Beachbody exercise programs work. Take P90X or Chalene Extreme, for instance. Both have you bulk up for the first month before doing any kind of cut/lean phase. I never really got why they wanted you to lift so heavy for the first phase until now.

Let me go back to her insistence that you can’t lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. You have to create a deficit in calories (and/or a deficit by doing lots of cardio) to lose fat and you have to create a surplus in calories (while strength training) to gain muscle. So the quickest way to get a fit physique would be to first create a surplus in calories while doing a strength training program. You may actually see a bit of an increase on the scale initially. Don’t FREAK OUT! Then, you work on adding in more cardio and decreasing calories to cut the fat so that the muscles you’ve created finally show.

Why does any of this matter for you? Here is why. Size matters! If you could be 135 lbs in a size 10 or 135 lbs in a size 4, which would you choose? You can technically have either, but it all depends on your body fat %. Look at the following picture, which I previously posted to my Facebook page. This girl shows how adding muscle and losing body fat (but she didn’t do it at the same time) makes her body look much different at the same weight. Had she just started out at that weight, not done much of any strength training, and decreased calories/increased cardio, she would have lost some more lbs, but she would NOT look this good., even if she was 8-10 lbs lighter! She’d just look like a scrawnier version of her old self, still very soft and probably still not fitting in those size 4‘s she wants to get into. (Photo courtesy of Jamie Eason’s Facebook fan page.)

Maybe you’re ok with that. Perhaps you have a lot of weight to lose as opposed to 10-20 lbs and would rather lose weight first and then work on adding muscle in before cutting around your goal weight. Fine, that’s up to you. Even if you are ok with just losing weight initially (body fat and muscle, too), you should still check you body fat %. Sometimes when the scale isn’t really changing much, your measurements can still be changing, which can be a powerful motivator to continue with your plan when your resolve is flagging. So what if the scale didn’t move this week if your waist measurement went down a half inch! :o) Checking your measurements regularly (I did it about every 2 weeks) will help you see that you are still making progress, even when you feel like you aren’t. Besides, if you are significantly overweight, even just losing a lot of lbs will make your body fat decrease, for a while anyway.

Here is how you check your body fat %. Grab one of those soft tape measure strips at the store. Go to the Body Fat Calculator. Click on the Female Body Calculator tab (or stay with male, guys!). Enter your age and weight. Click on the Tape tab. (Although the caliper tests are even more accurate than the tape measurement, I found that the tape test was easier for me and for beginners, too.) Enter your height in inches and take measurements of your neck, waist, and hips. Just for fun, I’d also take measurements of my bicep (about two inches below my armpit) and my thigh to track changes. Here’s an important point, though. Wherever you measure, you have to measure there every single time, or your numbers will be off. For instance, I may measure my waist an inch below my belly button this week, but if I measure my waist two inches below my belly button, I’d get two different measurements, even with no actual change. Ok I digress. Back to the calculating! Write these measurements down on a piece of paper with the date. Now, once you’ve plugged those numbers in, the calculator will give you a body fat %. This is the % of fat that is in your body as opposed to the rest of your “weight,” which consists of muscles, organs, fluid, bones, etc. There’s even a nifty little chart that tells you where you fall according to your body fat %.

If you are making good food choices and working out any (whether it’s only cardio or if you’re also adding in strength training), I commend you for working on your health. Any exercise will produce positive results, and you should feel really good about the changes you are making now for your health. Even if you aren’t focusing on losing body fat right now, adding in some strength training still gives you an added boost in calorie burn. If you decide not to check your body fat %, that’s ok, too. Maybe just try taking those measurements and writing them down somewhere a couple of times a month. Just remember that the scale is NOT the whole story and that you shouldn’t let it discourage you from trying to reach your goals.

A new year has begun. Many are so afraid to set resolutions for fear of failure. Not me. I love setting goals for myself, even if I don’t reach all of them. Here is what I’m looking forward to this year:

I’m going to be a mommy! This is probably the biggest and most important thing that will happen to me in 2013. This opens a huge door for all kinds of resolutions, but for the most part, I want to just learn how to take care of my baby and juggle the responsibilities of family and work. Since I’ll be having Rachel at the end of the Spring semester, I’ll get all summer to spend time with her and get adjusted to being a mommy before going back to work in the fall. I know the time will fly by, but I hope to make the most of it. Which leads me to my next resolution…

I want to focus on spending my time wisely. I am the Queen of Time Wasting. Brother Don gave a sermon about time wasting just this Sunday, and it really hit home. Satan steals our time with needless anxiety by overloading us with unnecessary commitments, possessions, work, and information. The other major source of anxiety (and time-wasting) is regret. We have only 8,760 hours in a year. Why spend it dwelling on what has already happened and can’t be changed? Instead of wasting time on the above robbers of time, I want to focus my attention to the following: drawing closer to God, spending time with family and friends, doing all I can to raise Rachel as well as I am able, taking care of my health (exercise and nutrition).

Those are the things I’m setting my sights on in 2013. My spiritual life is very important to me, so I plan on devoting more time to Bible study and prayer. I plan on working through the entire Bible in a year (one of those plans for weekly study), but even if I am unable to always keep up, reading even half or a third on my own will be better than just opening it only when I’m in church.

I feel like I am constantly struggling to give more attention to my family and friends, who honestly deserve it. I know I can do better in this area. I have resolved to work on this issue in the past, and I believe that it has gotten much better recently. There is always room for improvement, though!

I am already focusing a lot of attention on how I want to raise Rachel. I am reading some books that I think might be helpful. I am getting my registry in order, buying some clothes and other items along the way, and learning about cloth diapering. I’m taking birthing and breastfeeding classes this month to prepare for her arrival.

As I always strive to do, I plan on focusing on my health. During the time I was trying to conceive, I let a lot of this go to the wayside. I stopped teaching Zumba when I had my first miscarriage in March. Zumba had been my most favorite type of working out, and suddenly, it was gone. So was that 2-3 hours of calorie burn every week that I was suddenly missing. I wasn’t eating all that well and rarely exercised. Running wasn’t giving me the solace it had in the past. Much of it was from apathy/light depression. Some of it was from fear that exercise might cause another miscarriage. So I became complacent about my health. Now, I am struggling because I am gaining a good bit of weight with this pregnancy. I know that I can make more time for weekly exercise (I have become very lazy about exercise and have really lost the habit), and my nutrition has been atrocious. I’d really gotten into the mindset of ‘I’m pregnant, so I can eat whatever I want!’ I know better, so I’m going to start eating better. Will you never see me with a big scoop of Coldstone? No, I won’t go that far. :) But I can doing better on a day-to-day basis. Part of making health a priority is to maintain focus, which I do through my Facebook page, which is a source of self-motivation, and Dailymile.com, where I keep up with my yearly walking and running miles.

It’s always a little overwhelming looking at what you want to accomplish in a year, but we are amazing in our ability to adapt to new things. Make your 2013 a wonderful year.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is an appropriate acronym, is when you tend to feel depression at certain times of the year, usually during winter. The world is so cold and gray paired with Vitamin D deficiency from too little sunlight, which makes some sensitive people struggle during the winter months. It has even been suggested we have adapted beyond the hibernation response for animals in winter months but still feel its effects. I get so crabby during the cold months. It’s so noticeable that when we do have a few days of unseasonable warm, sunny weather, I feel almost instantly better, like my head has been dark and foggy and someone finally opened some curtains and turned the light on. I think SAD is why I have such a hard time keeping myself motivated during winter. I get completely drained during the winter months. I don’t want to do anything that I generally like to do, such as running, cooking, cleaning (ok, so i don’t really like to do that, BUT it is 10 times more difficult to make myself do it in the winter), painting, writing, etc. In addition to decreased energy, another symptom of SAD is sleeping too much. During Christmas break, I was getting 10 and 12 hours of sleep a day easily. I am still sleeping too much on the weekends and often take long naps in the afternoon during the work week whenever I get a chance. This time of year, I always wonder if I’m showing signs of narcolepsy or have some other serious and undetected illness; I get so lethargic that I could believe it! As soon as the days start warming up and I get my sufficient doses of daily sunshine, I have instant energy and a mood boost. I want to run and garden and clean. I am biding my time until I feel like myself again. I’m tired of feeling SAD. I’m just tired.

my friend Samantha and I went for a nice walk yesterday after church. her parents live next door to me, and she and I are doing the Warrior Dash together in April. she hasn’t exercised at all since around the time she found out she was pregnant sometime around the first part of last year, so we had to get out and get started on our training for the Warrior Dash.

it was warm for january but was also threatening to rain all morning, but after we left her parents’ house, the sun came out, the air really warmed up, and it turned out to be a beautiful day. we walked almost 3 and a half miles total, but it didn’t seem that far because we chatted the whole time. we were actually sweaty by the time we were through, even though our pace was pretty slow. my calves are so sore this morning, which surprised me since i’ve been running some this past week. i guess walking is just a different motion, though. it is going to be a challenge to teach an hour long Zumba class tonight with sore calves. one of my biggest fears is catching a calf cramp in the middle of a song. i have issues with my calves anyway.

i’m so glad Samantha is out moving again and getting in some exercise. not only is it necessary for good health, exercise just makes you feel better if you get into the habit of it. and it was such a pleasant change to have someone to talk to during a workout. so many of my workouts are solo. we plan to try to get out every Sunday for our weekly walks, and i’m really looking forward to them.

just went for my first run of 2012, and it was actually the first run i’ve done in about two months. i haven’t really been feeling like running lately as much as i work, but i started a challenge on dailymile.com with my friends to help motivate us to run 400 miles this year. it was my goal mileage for 2011, but i really didn’t put out much effort last year. i’m hoping i can do it this year, though. 400 miles is only about 8 miles per week. this year, though, i am going to count all my mileage, so that includes any walking i do, too. see, i do this weird argument with myself. i usually convince myself that walking isn’t worthy of counting as mileage (because really we walk every day and everyone can do it, so it’s not that special right? so wrong!), so on days when i don’t feel like running but could easily get a few miles of walking in, i don’t because it’s a waste of time if it doesn’t “count.” so then i burn zero calories all because i think i’m too good to count walking as exercise. i mean, i am a tough half marathoner. i can run 14 miles without stopping. i can train in 95 degree mississippi heat. it’s okay for others to walk but not for me. i can run and run and run. i can’t belittle myself to get on the treadmill and walk for two miles. oh so silly reasoning. egos. our pride stops us from doing so many good things for ourselves. walking is a great form of cardio. you burn almost as many calories as running without the impact of running. i admit that i have listened to running elitists and let their distaste for walking or run/walk influence me far too long. so long as i am moving my butt off the couch, who cares what i’m doing??? with three jobs, i know that i will probably not be able to do 400 miles worth of just running, but i am determined to do 400 miles regardless. i’ll run when i can and walk when i feel like it.

so back to my first run of the year. i was really nervous (as i always am before a run, which is odd after 5 years of running…), so i procrastinated for a few hours. i needed to eat. then, the food needed to digest. then, my dog needed to go out. then, i needed to hydrate. then, my garmin needed to charge. then, i needed a nap. then, i…had no more excuses. i bundled up because this southern girl does NOT like the cold. and boy was it cold! i wore my thin nike livestrong wind breaker, which i love love love. it makes me feel like such a runner (why, i don’t know). anyway, i started my garmin and was off. i was surprised to find that i wasn’t dying like i thought i would after having not run for two months. i figured it was just the cold wind numbing my pain, and i kept going. coming up near the first mile mark, i started to feel a little fatigue, and it was so COLD. the wind was gusting at about 20 miles per hour, and the shady spots in the road were so chilly. i glanced down at my windbreaker, which is a gorgeous blue and along the zipper on my chest in bright yellow is “LiveStrong,” the trademark for the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research. when i look down, all i can see is the “strong” part of the logo, and it made me think about all those people out there battling cancer, living their lives day to day struggling much worse than i was out on the road today, and i picked up my pace. i resolved to finish the run with no walking, not because i was feeling snobbish toward walking but because i knew that i was strong enough to do two miles without a walk break. not only was i going to finish the last mile without walking, i was going to do it stronger and faster than the first, and i did. i am healthy, i am fit, and i am alive (in more ways than merely breathing). that’s what i have to celebrate this new year.

to join my 400 miles in 2012 challenge, join dailymile.com for free and join the FIT IN 400 challenge or click here: FIT IN 400 Challenge

This week, I decided to try the Shakeology 3-day Cleanse. It is supposed to remove toxins and gunk built up in your system, which I needed after splurging quite a lot over Thanksgiving. I hadn’t gained weight over the holiday, but I definitely didn’t feel my best. So basically, you drink a shake for breakfast, one for lunch, one for a snack, and eat a salad with grilled chicken (or other white protein) and low-fat dressing for supper. You can also have 1-2 pieces of fruit and green tea for snacks. I changed my plan just a bit. You’re supposed to mix your Shakeology with water for the three days, but I used almond milk instead, because #1, mixing it with water sounds really unappealing to me, and #2, I felt like I needed more calories than the 800 or so this cleanse has you down to. That’s just not healthy, in my opinion, even if it is only for 3 days. The other change I made was that I had decided that if I felt truly hungry, I’d eat extra fruit.

Day 1:
Today went pretty well. I had all three shakes plus two pieces of fruit, a delicious honey crisp apple and a d’anjou pear. I baked my chicken tonight and had a big salad with zesty Italian vinaigrette. I taught a Zumba class around 5 p.m., and I didn’t feel the least bit weak. By the time I went to bed, which was pretty late, I felt hungry enough that my tummy was growling again, so I ate ½ cup of mandarin oranges and went back to bed. I felt really…I don’t even know how to describe it. Not bloated and puffy. I know that probably isn’t clear, but it’s the only way I can describe it.

Day 2:
I have felt hungrier today. I had two shakes, one for breakfast and one for lunch, a navel orange, and a red d‘Anjou pear. I didn’t want the shake after school, so I ate my salad with chicken before going to my second job. I had a low fat Asian sesame dressing that was soooo delicious. When I got home from my night class, my 3rd shake still didn’t appeal to me, so I had a Mariani Sesame Honey Bar, which is an all natural seed, nut, raisin, and honey bar that I found on my last shopping trip to WalMart. I’d had one over Thanksgiving holiday week and thought that it was really bland, but eating it after being on this cleanse and not having much sugar and such, it tasted so delicious and sweet tonight! Yum!

Day 3:
I had two shakes, a honey crisp apple, and a d’anjou pear earlier today. I ate my chicken salad with low fat thousand island dressing this evening. I am sipping on coffee and might have some green tea later. I will probably have my third shake before bed. Sticking with the cleanse was more difficult today. It’s been a bit of a mental struggle. I didn’t have my morning shake right off, so it was about 9 a.m. before I had it, so I was very hungry by the time I drank it, and all I could think about was eating something solid instead. The shake satisfied me, though, but it was a little later than usual that I had my second shake, too. Also, I am one of those people that gets really sick of a food if I eat it for more than two meals in a row, so eating the same things with only little variations over the past three days has not been easy. Now, to be fair to the cleanse, I could have chosen to eat different white-meat protein sources, which would have changed things up a good bit, but I was definitely going for easy by batch cooking three days’ worth of chicken during my busy work week. I also feel a bit weaker today. I think I could probably teach Zumba tonight if I had to, but I’d struggle. Ended up drinking my last shake before bed, and it was very satisfying. I felt full and comfortable and not deprived.

Final Impressions:
For my measurements, I lost ½ inch from my waist, and 1 inch from my hips from when I measured on Wednesday. I also lost 2 lbs. So that comes down to 18.41% bodyfat, which is the lowest I’ve been in YEARS! Yes, I did a little dance :o) In fact, in all the years that I have been fitness-conscious and health-knowledgeable, I have never even seen this number!!! I am sure sometime in high school when I was in a size 0 jeans, I was down below this body fat, but I definitely wasn’t doing it the healthy way back then, so it doesn’t count! :oD Also, I didn’t lose muscle (I actually gained over a lb in muscle!), so if losing some of your lean body mass is a concern when doing a cleanse, I can at least say from my experience that Shakeology didn’t let me down there, either. I figured out my body fat by using this calculator:

Want to try it? You can get Shakeology through me by going to myshakeology.com/cshows. You will also be a part of my Beachbody team, where I will coach you for free, offering advice, fitness and health info, and whatever level of motivation and support you need from me. The best part about Shakeology as a product is that there is a 30-day empty bag-no questions asked-money-back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with it. It’s definitely worth a try. If you read back through my blog, I was pretty skeptical about it. In fact, my Beachbody coach had talked to me about it numerous times before I finally tried it. But I can say with all honesty that I have really liked the results I’ve gotten with it. I feel better, and I look better. That is worth the money to me. It isn’t the cheapest meal replacement out there, but it is the healthiest. It’s also the most filling that I’ve tried, and I’ve done things like SlimFast in the past that left me hungry all the time. Shakeology fills me up when I have it for lunch. I pay less than a dollar more per day than I was when I bought frozen low calorie dinners and fruit or yogurt for lunch, and I’m just as satisfied, if not more so. I am definitely more satisfied with what Shakeology has done for my body – made me slimmer by body fat reduction and smaller measurements, given me more energy throughout the day, and helped me stop obsessing about food so much. If you have more questions, just email me (csshows@yahoo.com) or message me on Facebook.